This was a curious question to come between lovers.

All his life Surrey had been a devotee of his country and its flag.

While he was a boy Kossuth had come to these shores, and he yet remembered how he had cheered himself hoarse with pride and delight, as the eloquent voice and impassioned lips of the great Magyar sounded the praise of America, as the "refuge of the oppressed and the hope of the world." He yet remembered how when the hand, every gesture of which was instinct with power, was lifted to the flag,--the flag, stainless, spotless, without blemish or flaw; the flag which was "fair as the sun, clear as the moon," and to the oppressors of the earth "terrible as an army with banners,"-- he yet remembered how, as this emblem of liberty was thus apostrophized and saluted, the tears had rushed to his boyish eyes, and his voice had said, for his heart, "Thank God, I am an American!" One day he made some such remark to her.

She answered, "I, too, am an American, but I do not thank God for it." At another time he said, as some emigrants passed them in the street, "What a sense of pride it gives one in one's country, to see her so stretch out her arms to help and embrace the outcast and suffering of the whole world!" She smiled--bitterly, he thought; and replied, "O just and magnanimous country, to feed and clothe the stranger from without, while she outrages and destroys her children within!" "You do not love America," he said.
"I do not love America," she responded.
"And yet it is a wonderful country." "Ay," briefly, almost satirically, "a wonderful country, indeed!" "Still you stay here, live here." "Yes, it is my country.

Whatever I think of it, I will not be driven away from it; it is my right to remain." "Her right to remain ?" he thought; "what does she mean by that?
she speaks as though conscience were involved in the thing.